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The Sweet Requiem
A Perilous Trek & the Pangs of Memory
Speakers
91 minutes | 2018 | Narrative Feature
Directors: Ritu Sarin & Tenzing Sonam
Writer: Tenzing Sonam
Dolkar is a 25-year-old Tibetan woman living in Delhi. 15 years ago, she escaped from Tibet with her father, making a perilous trek across the Himalayas. Since then she has suppressed all recollection of that traumatic journey. But when Dolkar unexpectedly encounters Gompo, the guide who led them from Tibet only to abandon them before they crossed the final pass to freedom, memories of her escape are reignited and she is propelled on an obsessive search for reconciliation and closure.
Following Gompo obsessively through the narrow alleys of Majnu ka Tila, the Tibetan refugee colony in North Delhi, she is sucked into his strange and solitary existence. Caught up in a web of political intrigue that is much larger than her personal quest, Dolkar must now reconcile Gompo’s act of treachery that has haunted her all her life with the life-or-death situation he now faces. The two stories moving in tandem, one inexorably forwards in the present, the other unexpectedly backwards in time, both determined by a series of fateful choices, reaches its conclusion as Dolkar and Gompo finally confront each other and the source of Dolkar’s long-buried anguish is revealed
The screening will be followed by a discussion with directors Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam.
Speakers
Ritu Sarin & Tenzing Sonam
Indian-Tibetan filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam have been working together for more than 30 years.
A recurring subject in their work is Tibet, with which they have been intimately involved in a number of different ways: personally, politically and artistically. Through their films and artwork, they have attempted to document, question and reflect on the questions of exile, identity and nationalism that confront the Tibetan people.
Working through their film company, White Crane Films, they have made several award-winning documentaries, a number of video installations and two feature films. Their documentary, The Sun Behind the Clouds (2009), won the Vaclav Havel Award at the One World Film Festival in Prague. Their feature films, Dreaming Lhasa (2005) and The Sweet Requiem (2018) both premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Their installations have shown at Contour Biennale (2017), Khoj Studios (2015), Busan Biennale (2010), Mori Art Museum (2009), and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (2009), among other places.
They are also the directors of the Dharamshala International Film Festival, which they founded in 2012 and is now one of India’s leading independent film festivals.
